Add prayer times to Ubuntu Unity Indicator Panel

I just wanted to take a moment to share this small nifty program that I have running on my Ubuntu 16.04 installation. It very accurately tells me prayer times and shows a small popup 15 minutes before the time for a specific Salah enters.

The best thing about it is that it completely blends in the design of the Ubuntu Unity UI and gives the feel of a System App.

Here is how it is looking on my screen at the moment:

Prayer times for Ubuntu 16.04

The first step to install it is to add the following PPA to your sources. Open terminal (CTRL + ALT + T) and enter the following command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:m-alaa8/indicator-prayer-times

And then, to update the package list run:
sudo apt-get update

Once apt update finishes its thing, you should be able to install it by writing:
sudo apt install indicator-prayer-times

If the above method doesn't work or produces errors, you can try and install it by downloading the deb file from here: prayer-times-indicator.deb

Now, by default the app shows remaining time till the next Salah, and the icon in the indicator too is a little bit weird (in my humble opinion). So I went ahead and modified the app a little bit to suit my theme and made it show the time of the next Salah instead of the number of minutes remaining to it. I am using the Ubuntu Paper (inspired by material design) theme.
And if some of you would like the app the way it looks on my screen, please feel free to download these files below and patch the app with these files (I'll tell you how) and your indicator panel will look exactly like mine.

Basically all you have to do is to copy the indicator-prayer-times file to /usr/bin/directory and the SVG Icon to /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/ folder.

You will have to give execution permission to the downloaded indicator-prayer-times file to allow it to be runnable (before or after moving it to the /usr/bin directory). This can be done easily by writing the following command in the terminal (when you're at the same directory as the above mentioned file:
sudo chmod +x indicator-prayer-times

If you face trouble moving the file to that directory, you can simply open the file browser as admin and use it to copy and paste easily. To do that, simply type: sudo nautilus ./ & in a terminal.

7 comments

As Salam O Alaikum bro, Its a nice app for muslims to get notifications and updates regarding Salah. I have successfully installed your app in my kubuntu 18.04. but i am getting the issue regarding timings. I live in Lahore, Pakistan and here Salah timings are different than what app shows me. I have not only set my city in the settings but also my coordinations even timezone itself. Still i am getting the wrong timings.
Kindly guide how to fix this issue ?

Brother, you can click on the prayer times icon in the notification area and then click settings. There you will see a text box in front of "choose your city". You can type the name of your city and click Fetch. This will update the coordinates of your city. You can also look for your location's coordinates manually and enter it in the settings screen. After clicking ok the app will refresh and show you your updated prayer times.

Assalam o Aaliakum Wr Wb,
Bro, I interested in your program, Prayer times. So on my ubuntu 16.04.4 PC, I tried to install it. I add the PPA successfully. but when I updated it with 'sudo apt-get update', I got these errors:
W: The repository 'http://ppa.launchpad.net/m-alaa8/indicator-prayer-times/ubuntu xenial Release' does not have a Release file.
N: Data from such a repository can't be authenticated and is therefore potentially dangerous to use.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.
E: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/m-alaa8/indicator-prayer-times/ubuntu/dists/xenial/main/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found
E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.
I also tried to download it from google drive and I followed your instruction put it in /usr/bin/ but when I tried to run it, it shows another error:
$ indicator-prayer-times
Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "topmenu-gtk-module"
/usr/bin/indicator-prayer-times:5: PyGIWarning: Gtk was imported without specifying a version first. Use gi.require_version('Gtk', '3.0') before import to ensure that the right version gets loaded.
from gi.repository import Gtk, GObject, Gio, GLib, GdkPixbuf # "The New One :D"
/usr/bin/indicator-prayer-times:6: PyGIWarning: AppIndicator3 was imported without specifying a version first. Use gi.require_version('AppIndicator3', '0.1') before import to ensure that the right version gets loaded.
from gi.repository import AppIndicator3 as AI
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/indicator-prayer-times", line 7, in
from prayertime import *
ImportError: No module named prayertime
Can you give me more proper instruction how to install this program?
Jazak Allah o kher

Wa Alaikum-as-Salaam Warahmatullah,
Brother if you are unable to install the app from the repo, please go ahead and try to install it using the deb file. You can download the deb file from here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xHe5r9SeS33J0WxrVD-7fcPCdICV7sLz
Please note that the modified files will only work after you have first installed the program completely.
Do let me know if this method works. Thanks! 🙂